Archive for the ‘I’m not judging you’ Category

25 Aug

Treadmill recipe and dinner workout

Posted by Noelle in I'm not judging you.

As some of you who follow my every word on Facebook already know, I got my ass to the gym yesterday.  In part, like Allie suggested (and by the way, let me take this long overdue moment to plug her/our newest endeavor known as The Greenists) I figured going to the gym would help me overcome the sads.  Additionally, there’s a guy that I’m sort of stalking who I hoped would be there.  Alas, he was not there, but I did get a really good workout in, which I’m in the mood to share.

I’ve heard places, including on NPR yesterday, that interval training is all the rage and quite good for building athleticism.  That means going from a steady pace to a short burst of high-paced activity where your heart rate goes up to 80%.  This is how I spent 30 minutes on the treadmill today, which felt great:

  • minute 0-4, walk at 3.2
  • minute 4-5, run at 6.2
  • minute 5-9, walk at 3.4
  • minute 9-10, run at 6.4
  • minute 10-14, walk at 3.6
  • minute 14-15, run at 6.6
  • minute 15-19, walk at 3.8
  • minute 19-20, run at 6.8
  • minute 20-24, walk at 4.0
  • minute 24-25, run at 7.0
  • minute 25-30, walk at 3.8, decrease by .1 every 30 seconds.

You can adjust that to intervals that are slower or faster, depending on what you like.  Running at 7.0 is just about the limits of what I can do, so I like to push myself to that at the very end.  But the key is that I didn’t feel like I was going through 30 straight minutes of dying.

Once I was done with treadmilling, and did some stretching to warm down (and one last search of the gym floor to see if the guy snuck in while I was in the ladies room), I went home and made a huge bowl of mac & cheese, which probably equaled about five times the calories I burned.  But darnit, I was in a self-medicating mood!  Cardio for the uppers and cheesy carbs for the downers.  And then I (as those of you who follow me on Twitter know) watched “Intervention” to try and figure out what people who spend thousands of dollars a month on drugs do for a living, to see if I can do something similar, but without the drugs and alcohol addiction.  I have, more than once, even in the salad days, stood in the wine store and said to myself, “man, eight dollars is a lot to spend on this stuff…”

If anyone ever tries to film a secret documentary on my jogging and comfort food addiction, I’m not participating, because honestly, I do feel better today.

18 Nov

Blogworthiness

Posted by Noelle in Drop Everything And Read, Hooray for Hollywood, I'm not judging you, oh so meta, That Darn Cat. Tagged: , , .

Thanks to everyone who commented yesterday, that was a fun little deep-thoughtish discussion.  I appreciate all of your internet-comment personalities, and I wonder if they’re distinct from your other personalities.

For some reason, yesterday I was thinking about blog topics for today all day long.  It was one of those days when my first reaction to any event was, “can I blog about that?”  Eventually, I rejected each topic on its own merits.

Cases in point:

I filled out the application to a December swim meet using yard times instead of meters, but caught the mistake in time. Imagine my embarrassment if I had shown up to swim the 50 freestyle with a 34 second seed time when it would actually take me 38 seconds!  Blogworthiness: save it for Twitter.

I went to the gym at the peak hour of 5:30 PM, and literally bumped into three other women in the locker room, and then opened the bathroom stall door on a woman who hadn’t locked it properly, and then got on the world’s squeakiest elliptical machine, and then got scolded for putting free weights on a bench instead of the floor.  Blogworthiness: Save up those stories for a longer post so I can use my “I’m not judging you” category.  Remember, free pizza night is just around the corner.

SisterAlyson called and referred to Birmingham as “that pigeon kicker” Blogworthiness: do a quick search of The Daily T and realize that maybe I never told the story of the time Birmingham kicked the pigeons but still never used the word “douchebag.”  Really?  I never told that story?  Well, it’s too late, I already started this post.  I’ll have to save that story for later.

Micki had a bad case of “if you think it smells bad going in, you should smell it coming out” yesterday.  As I was cleaning the litter box, I noticed that her poo had taken the shape of the symbol Prince used when he stopped going by a name.  I was held it in the scooper debating whether I should take a picture of it or not.  In the end, I decided this is not a scat blog, and you’re just going to have to take my word for it that it happened.  Blogworthiness: Maybe a Facebook status update.

Saw the movie A Thousand Acres last night.  It’s based on the Pulitzer-Prize winning book of the same title by Jane Smiley.  It tells the story of three sisters, Ginny, Rose and Caroline and their father Larry, the most respected farmer in the county.  He decides to divide the farm among the three sisters, but Caroline, the favorite daughter, rejects that idea.  Larry cuts her out of the deal and the family, but quickly regrets that decision, and accuses the other daughters of trying to steal his land.  He becomes more and belligerent, eventually blowing up at his two eldest daughters right before a thunderstorm.  Instead of letting their husbands take him home, he goes raging into the storm.  From then on, all is lost.

I read the book shortly after college, upon my mother’s recommendation and I loved it.  As we were discussing it afterward she said, “and didn’t you love all the parallels to King Lear?”  People, I read King Lear in high school AND college, an I worked on a production of it during my sophomore year.  No clue.  I had no freaking clue until my mom brought it up, even though the plot is almost exactly the same.

The movie was great too, by the way.  I don’t understand why it’s not more well known.  It stars Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Jason Robards, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Colin Firth, Keith Carradine, (a young) Michelle Williams and Elizabeth Moss, and the actor who played the teacher in Just One of the Guys who told Terry she should be a model.  Good stuff.  And now you can put it on your Netflix queue, and never have to go through the embarassment of having your mother be the first to tell you it is based on one of the greatest plays in the English language.  Blogworthiness: I just sort of blogged it just now.

5 Aug

Chew, chew, chew, it is so good for you

Posted by Noelle in Eat your veggies, I'm not judging you. Tagged: , .

Monday night was best night of the month, being free pizza night at the gym. Over the course of the past few months, I’ve remained peeved about the gym not letting me suspend my membership for the two months I was laid up with the broken ankle, and I’ve been getting my money back by having up to three slices of pizza at a time. However, last night I just wasn’t in the mood and stopped at one. The horror! I know.

As I was doing crunches on the mat around the corner from the pizza (and I must have done more than usual, because it just hurt when I sneezed) two beefy guys were discussing just how counter-intuitive pizza at the gym can be. The one guy who must have had 10 pounds for each tattoo he had (making him about 230 or so…) complained that the gym also gives away Tootsie Rolls at the exit and, “those things are fifty calories each! That’s at least forty minutes of cardio just to work one off!”

At that point, I laughed out loud and quickly turned it into a cough because that was the same dialouge I heard in the locker room coming out of the mouth of one of the ninety pound elipitical bunnies who also added, “I love this gym because it has free tanning and I used to spend like, forty dollars a week on tanning.”

Alas, tattoo guy did not also express a desire to tan, only a desire to wail on his pecs, and not to be tempted to eat pizza at the gym. Some people are so crazy!

Speaking of, remember how I’ve been giving up something every month? No-sugar July went pretty well, with a couple of exceptions, like the time I made peach blueberry cobbler for a party, and the time I got to eat homemade ice cream, and the time after day one of the swim meet where we went to an ice cream stand and I figured that 800 meters of swimming = one butterscotch sundae. And also the times when I lifted the ban for the Independence Day holiday. And that one time when I ate the leftover ice cream that went with the blueberry cobbler. Oh, and that one office birthday cake, because it was an ice cream cake. But other than that, I was really good!

For August, I decided to change it up a little. Some of my elimination diets have actually stuck around, particularly the fried food one, which I’ve not had a taste for since giving it up in June. I could attempt to give up caffeine, alcohol, or wheat, which are all on the list of my vices. But those are so central to my diet, giving them up would just be deprivation, which is not the point. Instead, I’m going to try and eat more slowly, meaning August is going to be the month of conscious mastication.

I so want to make a “that’s what single girls do” kind of joke here, but I’m going to be mature enough to not make a thing about how that word sounds a lot like that other word.

So getting off that topic, this month’s challenge is not just for play. After nearly choking on chicken (technically soy nuggets) last month, I realized that I need to slow down and enjoy my food lest I rub myself out. It’s also a little bit of self-love, because chewing slowly can stimulate a feeling of fullness with less food, and that means weight loss, and that’s a service to myself. Now pardon me before I go blind.

1 May

3.1 miles to glory

Posted by Noelle in Birmingham, I'm not judging you. Tagged: .

This coming Saturday, I’m running in a 5K race.  It starts on the West side of the Hudson River, crosses the Mid-Hudson bridge, and lands at the YMCA.  It’s my first race since breaking my ankle.  I didn’t want to do it alone, and since I didn’t think any of my kickball posse would be interested, I convinced Birmingham to do it.   I figured a little goal-setting would get him used to the idea of planning for the future.  You know, for the next girl who dates him.

“Now that I can run for 10 minutes on my bad ankle, I think I’m going to do the YMCA bridge run again this year.”

“Cool, I’ll watch again.”

“No, I want you to do it with me this year.”

“…”

“The first year, you watched because you weren’t ready, and the next year, you didn’t do it because I did it with someone else. But this year you have plenty of warning, and I don’t think anyone else is interested, so you have to do it.”

“Well what’s it for?”

“For the sake of it.”

“I mean, who gets the money?”

“It’s not for charity.”

“So why are we doing it?”

“For fun!”

“So why am I doing it?”

“Because you’re being punished.”

Should be a good time!  I might even gather up some old sweatshirts so we can throw them away, and I’ll encourage Birmingham to get water from the people on the sidelines.  It’s not every day that a random stranger just hands you a cup of water, after all.  And because I’m not all mean, I promised I’d buy him pancakes if he finished.  I might even pre-buy the pancakes and hold them out with a stick in front of him, but that just seems mean.  I’ll get right on it, then.

3 Mar

Pumpkin with a Vengeance

Posted by Noelle in Eat your veggies, I'm not judging you.

img_1755.jpgOn Friday, I used a recipe from this cookbook to make these really great pumpkin cookies. It was the process of making the cookies that made me think I should get back in touch with the vegan / stigmata guy. As you may remember, one of my stated reasons not to pursue him further into the world of dating was his frequent use of the word “duchebag.” Another reason I didn’t write about was that I actually kind of liked him, and instead of that making me happy, it made me think about how I missed being with Birmingham. I did some quick math, and it added up to not being ready to be single, at least not after a few short months. So I broke it off for both reasons. But then he got back in touch with me, and as I was making the cookies I thought about how nice it would be to share them with someone who willingly took up a vegetarian diet, so I gave him a call. Or if we want to be technical and modern about it, I sent him a text.

That text led to us spending Sunday together in the city where we visited SisterAlyson and Lola and The Man of Action, ate burritos at my favorite joint, and went to the museum of Natural History. Did you know that it only took the moon one month to form from a million pieces of rock? And did you know that the Northern Lights are caused by sunstorms hitting the Earth’s magnetic field? Furthermore, we also learned that Sequoias grow mighty large, New York City tap water is totally drinkable, if you can find a working water fountain, and that coat check is only $2 a person, which can include a coat, a computer in a bag and an umbrella as long as only one person checks them. We also learned that if the person selling you the ticket to the museum asks if you’re a student, the answer is “yes,” because she is too bored to ask for ID. Overall an enjoyable day. Right now he has “buddy” status, and still doesn’t know about the blog. I think SisterAlyson likes him more than I do, and if she wanted to go for him, I wouldn’t stand in her way. Her boyfriend might, though.

But I was talking about cookies, right? Here’s the recipe for vegan-Pumpkin-Oatmeal-win-his-heart-even-if-you-don’t-really-want-it Cookies from the book:

2 cups all-purpose flour (I used half whole wheat, half all-purpose flour)
1 1/3 cups rolled oats (Finally a use for that wiley 1/3 cup measure!)
1 tsp. baking soda (Yeah, that box that’s been open in your fridge for months keeping things “fresh”)
3/4 tsp. salt (A good source of iodine!)
1 tsp. cinnamon (Resist the temptation to use more!)
1/2 tsp. nutmeg (Every time I use this spice I think of my nutty friend Meg.)
1 2/3 cups sugar (It’s VEGAN, not DIET.)
2/3 cups Canola oil (this is how we get around using eggs.)
2 tbsp Molasses (If you’ve been following all my recipes, you should have this leftover from the ginger cookies.)
1 cup canned pumpkin (that’s not the whole can!)
1 tsp. vanilla extract (smells so good…)
1 tbsp ground flaxseed (optional, but I used it since I’ve got a grinder and I heart flaxseed.)
1 cup walnuts (I didn’t have them on hand, I omitted them, and lived to tell the tale.)
1/2 cup raisins (Anyone watch the new P.Diddy production? Me, either.)

Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease two cookie sheets.
Mix together the flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices.
In a separate bowl, mix together the sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin and vanilla (and flaxseeds if using) until very well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in three batches, folding to combine. Fold in the walnuts and raisins.
Drop by tablespoons onto the prepared cookie sheets. They don’t spread very much so they can be placed only an inch apart. Flatten the tops of the cookies with a fork or with your fingers to press into a cookie shape. Bake for 16 minutes at 350. If you are using two sheets of cookies on two levels of your oven, rotate the sheets halfway through for even baking. You’ll have enough batter for four sheets.
Remove from oven, cool on the cookie sheet for 2 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack. These taste best when they’ve had some time to cool and set. They taste even better the next day!

The only problem with the recipe is that you’re leftover with half a can of pumpkin. What in the world does one do with half a can of pumpkin? I looked around my kitchen and spotted this on the top of my fridge:img_1752.jpg
The blender I got for Christmas and still haven’t taken out of the box! Oy vey, I can totally make a pumpkin smoothie! I did some internetting, and this is what I came up with, borrowed from here:

Vegan Pumpkin Smoothieimg_1756.jpg

the rest of your can of pumpkin puree
1 cup milk (I used Rice, you could use Soy or you could steal it from baby cows. Your choice.)
1/4 tsp. Cinnamon
1/8 tsp. Nutmeg
2 tsp. Raw Sugar
1 tsp. Maple Syrup (I didn’t have that, so I used maple sugar.)
4 ice cubes (note: if you get home from the gym and realize that all your ice cubes evaporated so you make a fresh batch and then watch the movie “Proof” on DVD the ice cubes will not be totally frozen by the time you finish watching the movie, which really wasn’t that good except when Jake Gyllenhaal was in the frame.)

Blend that shit, enjoy. It tastes kind of like the raw batter of a pumpkin pie, but slightly watery, which I chalk up to the slightly liquid-y ice cubes. A good source of beta-carotene, nonetheless.

A final note for those of you who are new: I go to a gym that has free pizza on the first Monday of every month. (see the “I’m not judging you” categories for more info.) It’s an odd customer appreciation thing, and it makes no sense, but I’m not going to question it because free pizza is one of the things I live for. I usually milk them for about 3 slices, especially after they wouldn’t let me put my membership on hold for the two months I was on crutches, and they don’t let me wear a bandanna because I might flash a gang color. However, this Monday falls right in the beginning of my vegan month, and eating all that pizza would not help my weight loss and personal goals. So I did my workout, stretched, and LEFT. I ate no pizza. Giving up such a marvelous opportunity means the rest of this month is going to be a cakewalk, if one could make cake without dairy.

5 Feb

Tuesday Eleven plus one

Posted by Noelle in Bringing home the bacon, Eat your veggies, I'm not judging you, It happened in the H.V., My Heart Bleeds Blue, Obey Your Masters, shilling.

  • I can’t get motivated to work right now.  I just finished lunch, I’m going to see if writing 11 12 random things about me will inspire me to write the company newsletter for the week.  (Which is the thing I do at work on Tuesdays.)
  • There’s some Mardi Gras stuff happening in New Orleans right now.  I’ve always wanted to go there for Mardi Gras, but I’ve never done it because every year I forget that it happens so damn early.  I’m not even over the high of Groundhog Day yet.
  • There are pictures of my dirty wine glasses and soap dispenser on the internet right now.  That’s kind of cool, yet odd.  I feel the need to explain that the rust stain is from a container of comet that I left on the sink for too long.
  • I called the Dutchess County board of elections right now to see how late the polls are open.  The woman who answered was lethargic and sounded as if she’s been smoking since birth.  As my co-worker quipped, it’s like she works for the Bored of Elections.
  • Since you asked, here’s one detail about the business venture my mom and I are formulating: it has to do with the Hudson Valley.
  • I have a date tonight with a guy I met online.  I know that he’s vegan, and that’s odd because in relationships, I prefer to be the one on the moral high ground when it comes to food.  But…
  • Last night I had three slices of pizza at the gym.  I live for the first Monday of the month.  And cheese.
  • I finished watching the most recent episodes of “The Office” last night.  I hope the rumors of the coming end of the writer’s strike are true.
  • I went swimming this morning.  I’m doing some remedial swimming on Tuesdays and Thursdays until I get to the point where I can go faster than the man with one leg.
  • Did I tell you that the man with one leg is a physical therapist?  I might go see him since I’m boycotting the mean doctor and all the people associated with him.  I’m seeing a new doctor that he recommended so I can get a second opinion.  I find it disquieting that I can see and feel the heads of the pins protruding from my ankle, I’d like to see if there’s another option.
  • I finished reading the book “A Fraction of the Whole” over the weekend.  Now I’m reading one called “Bonk” about the science of sex.  I’m really liking it so far.  Neither of these books are published yet.
  • Remember when I was raving about my Nike+iPod pedometer thing?  Well, while it was idle during the ankle breakage, the battery died.  There is no way to replace or re-charge the battery.  So I have to find the original receipt, take it back to the Apple store (which is an hour away) and maybe get a replacement, but they won’t guarantee it.  I’m none too happy about this.  But in good news, I tried running a little more the other day.  I made it for a full minute, twice.  Even though I was a bit hobbley and limpy, look out world, I’m coming back!

7 Jan

I’m free to do what I want any old time.

Posted by Noelle in I'm not judging you.

I’m a sucker for the suggestions of Aaron, so yeah, I changed my header to the charred sponge.  I might have taken a different angle on it had I known it was going to be so prominent, but that sponge is now busy biodegrading somewhere in the backyard that used to be pictured in my header.

Moving on… Do you know what was the coolest thing about being approved to drive on the first Monday of the month?  My inaugural legal drive (besides the one from the doctor’s office to work) was to the gym for Free Pizza Night!   And since the bastards wouldn’t give me back my membership dues for the two months I was out of commission, you better believe that I ate as much pizza as I could handle. By the way, that works out to be exactly three slices of pizza.

While there, I also requested that a car get towed.  Before breaking my ankle, I always wondered why there were even handicapped spaces at the gym.  Now, I get irate when I see non-tagged cars taking up the last parking places so that I have to walk further to get to the place where I then walk in place.  I don’t know if the towing happened or not.  But you better believe that after talking to the nice people at the front desk, I way over-exaggerated my limp as I walked to the treadmill (by way of the pizza) where I set out practice walking without a limp.  I’m just that dedicated to the rights of the handicapped.

25 Oct

Not to put too fine a point on it

Posted by Noelle in I'm not judging you, shilling.

Yesterday, two of the greatest things ever happened.

1. I went to Dairy Queen and got a pumpkin pie blizzard. It was ha-mazing. They put the vanilla soft serve in a cup and they mix it with pumpkin pie filling and some kind of small crunchy graham cracker things and top it with whipped cream and cinnamon. I sat in my car in the rain and the dark and ate it all and was so happy.

Then I went to the gym. Where:

2. I walked on the treadmill at a leisurely pace while watching “Pushing Daisies.” Not only is this show quickly endearing itself to me with its quirkiness, they also paid homage to the one and only They Might Be Giants, aka my favorite band, by singing “Birdhouse in Your Soul” which is such a favorite of mine that I use it for my “power song” when I’m running and need a little pick-me-up. However, last night, instead of making me turn the treadmill up past “3″ (I was full of ice cream, you know) the song just made me beam like an idiot, which would have bothered me if I went to a gym that’s all about not judging people.

So today, it’s rainy and miserable, but I’m still in a bit of a perky mood all thanks to a touch of endorphins, a dash of fantasy, and 2 cups of fall spiced ice cream.

1 Oct

I’m back!

Posted by Noelle in Bringing home the bacon, I'm not judging you, oh so meta.

In the comments of the last post, I took some (I hope) gentle chiding from Kir, who feels that a blog with the name “daily” in the title should post more than once a week.  In response, I put together this long-ass post with links and pictures and fun and games.  However, the hour is getting late, and the long-ass post still needs a lot of work on it, and the kickball newsletter is being ignored, and in light of the less-than-eight hours of sleep I got on my parents’ couch last night, I don’t have the mojo for more blogging at the moment.

So in short:

The work conference in Providence was great and time consuming and inspiring.

The last day of the bookstore was bittersweet.

The kickball game I missed was lost, and so was the one after it.

Lola the dog is soft and cute when washed.

My suitcase is still packed.

Don’t make a recipe that calls for fresh pumpkin when you can use canned instead, because the hour spent cutting pumpkin with a less-than-sharp knife is better spent: writing the kickball newsletter, cleaning the kitchen, napping, paying bills, watching “Once Upon a Time in China,” or blogging with links.

Do you like my October masthead?

I need a new camera, I think.

I’m going to be going to another conference in two weeks, but I’ll try and not drop off the radar that time.  In the meantime, you’d never miss me if you were using Google Reader!  Long live RSS!

If you’ve never stayed at the Providence Biltmore, I recommend that.  It’s even better if your company pays for it…

I missed Free Pizza Night for the fist time since I joined the gym.  Could this be the first step towards good health?  Probably not, considering how much cheese I put on my pumpkin casserole.

20 Sep

Nobody gets me

Posted by Noelle in I'm not judging you.

I was at the gym last night, using my favorite treadmill.  While I’m not one to have an affinity towards particular inanimate objects, I always chose this treadmill because of its position on the gym floor.  It’s close to a floor-to-ceiling support column positioned in just the right way to block view from the one television that is tuned to Fox News.

Yesterday, the treadmill next to my fave treadmill had a rolled-up copy of a women’s magazine in the cup holder.   As I was getting started, a sort of jocular looking man got on the treadmill next to me, and spotting the magazine asked, “is this taken?”

“No,” I told him, “You can borrow that copy of Redbook if you want.”

What did I get in response?  Dead silence.  Crickets.  A small look that implied I was stupid for thinking he would want to read a filthy women’s magazine.   All I was trying to do was bring a little humor into this world, people.  I suppose they were right about irony and sarcasm, it’s all dead.  Or maybe that just applies when you’re wearing sweats.  Either way, no more jokes at the gym.  Unless it’s about the fact that I’m silently judging EVERYBODY.  That never gets old.

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